Serenity

Am I told what to think?

What a funny notion but on the other hand, it happens. I was talking to a person I used to work with who stayed in the hell hole that was NDCHealth after I left. In a passing conversation sometime after I left I asked him if he liked working there. He said, "It's a great place to work. At least that is what I am told..."

How telling. Can't you hear the corporate rah, rah in that? Instead of actually making it a great place to work, they just tell people how much better it is. The problem is that employees who have been there and seen both worlds think the new working environment sucks. And they are right - except they are continuously told how much better things are now.

I wonder how often this happens in life. How often do we bother to gather empirical data versus being fed information via the media spoonful. How often have I used facts and data from unverified, plastic-haired commentator source versus my own research. I'm afraid I do this often. I don't have time, for example, to disect the federal register report on HIPAA legislation so I rely on shortcuts to bring me to a level of understanding that allows me to emphatically rant about regulations and requirements with minimal knowledge. Now that's convenience. This is not to say that I don't have my crap-detector finely tuned on every piece of information I receive, its just that if it sounds good and matches my core beliefs, it's readily added to the arsenal.

I was talking to a friend the other day and at the risk of sounding cryptic, we were talking about a subject that is controversial. I realized that I didn't have a stand on this issue. Now, in my many years of life that doesn't mean that I haven't ever thought about it but if I had to state my stance on the subject, I would have to defer until I had thought enough about it to make a statement. Either that or catch a documentary on Discovery that swayed my thinking and filled my arguement quiver with undocumented, unverifyable, unsubstantiated weapons.

I concluded at the end of our discussion that I wasn't affected by the topic and therefore didn't have a strong opinion - meaning that I would be able to argue either side effectively. This was a mistake. His take was that I should see the world as he sees it. There should be no middle ground and there certainly should be no such thing as a flexible opinion.

As I gather more information and change my mind as a result, I'm smarter, right? As I more deeply contemplate a topic and gather my own information, I should be better informed to make a decision, re-align my thinking, and fight to the death to make sure everyone sees it my way -- at least until I change my mind again...